Ash cloud’s silver lining: bluer skies

As volcanic ash cast a shadow over millions of lives, Londoners and other city dwellers across Europe were treated to a rare spectacle of nature: Pristine, blue skies brighter than any in recent memory.

The remarkable sight happened in part because mass flight groundings prevented busy airspace from being crisscrossed with plumes of jet exhaust that create a semi-permanent haze — and other effects beyond the white contrails themselves.

Just as city lights make it necessary for us to go to the desert to appreciate the true glitter of stars, so has modern aviation dulled us to what the noontime sky can really look like — until the erupting volcano in Iceland offered a reminder.

Britain’s poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, was inspired to write verses about the unusually clear skies above London: “Five miles up the hush and shush of ash/Yet the sky is as clean as a white slate/I could write my childhood there.”

Scientists cast the phenomenon in more prosaic terms. Without aircraft contrails, “the skies have been particularly blue,” said meteorology professor Chris Merchant of the University of Edinburgh.

The clearer skies are primarily due to a high pressure system in the region, but Merchant said the blue tone has been deeper than normal because of the lack of vapor from aircraft engines. Depending on weather conditions, the vapor trials can expand into thin cirrus clouds.

It’s as if somebody suddenly ripped a veil away, exposing the true colors of the heavens.

via Ash cloud’s silver lining: bluer skies – Yahoo! News.

We do influence this planet in a big way every day.  Same thing happened when flights were grounded after the 9/11 attacks.

Good time for a reminder from California Skywatch:

The public health impacts from this type of jet air pollution and lingering jet contrails may include but are not limited to:

• Respiratory problems
• Flu-like symptoms
• Asthma
• Allergies
• Chronic sore or raspy throat
• Persistent coughing
• Eye and skin irritations
• Nose bleeds, and
• Breathing difficulties

…Jet Emission Pollutants:

• Ozone: Lung function impairment, effects on exercise performance, increased airway responsiveness, increased susceptibility to respiratory infection, increased hospital admissions and emergency room visits, pulmonary inflammation and lung structure damage. (Examples of these effects are chronic inflammation and structural damage to lung tissue as well as accelerated decline in baseline lung function).
• Carbon Monoxide: Cardiovascular effects, especially in those persons with heart conditions. Effects on animals are similar to humans.
• Nitrogen Oxides: Lung irritation and lower resistance to respiratory infections. Premature mortality, aggravation of respiratory and cardiovascular disease, changes in lung function and increased respiratory symptoms, changes to lung tissues and structure, and altered respiratory defense mechanisms. (Asthmatics are especially sensitive).
• Volatile Organic Compounds: Eye and respiratory tract irritation, headaches, dizziness, visual disorders, and memory impairment.

Clever New Caledonian crows can use three tools

New Caledonian crows have given scientists yet another display of their tool-using prowess.

Scientists from New Zealand’s University of Auckland have found that the birds are able to use three tools in succession to reach some food.

The crows, which use tools in the wild, have also shown other problem-solving behaviour, but this find suggests they are more innovative than was thought.

The research is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The team headed to the South Pacific island of New Caledonia, the home of Corvus moneduloides.

They are the only birds known to craft and use tools in the wild.

The discovery that they whittle branches into hooks and tear leaves into barbed probes to extract food from hard-to-reach nooks astounded scientists, who had previously thought that ability to fashion tools was unique to primates.

And further research in the laboratory and the field has revealed that New Caledonian crows are also innovative problem solvers, often rivalling primates. Experiments have shown that the birds can craft new tools out of unfamiliar materials, as well as use a number of tools in succession.

To further understand how the birds perform these tasks, the University of Auckland team set seven wild crows, which had temporarily been captured and placed in an aviary, a complicated problem.

The birds were presented with some out-of reach food; a long tool, which could be used to extract the food, but which was also out of reach, tucked behind the bars of a box; and a short tool, which could be used to extract the long tool, but which was attached to the end of a dangling piece of string tied to the crow’s perch. …

One bird, Sam, spent 110 seconds inspecting the apparatus before completing each of the steps without any mistakes. Another bird, Casper, also completed on his first try, although he was initially puzzled by the string.

The other two birds solved the problem on their third and fourth attempts.

Alex Taylor, the lead author of the paper, said: “Finding that the crows could solve the problem even when they had to innovate two behaviours was incredibly surprising.” …

via BBC News – Clever New Caledonian crows can use three tools.

Heaven: A fool’s paradise

Johann Hari has written a powerful piece that describes when, who, how and why we created heaven.

John Lennon urged us: “Imagine there’s no heaven/It’s easy if you try/No hell below us/Above us only sky.” Yet the religious aren’t turning to Lennonism any faster than Leninism. Today, according to a new book by Lisa Miller, Newsweek’s religion correspondent, 81 per cent of Americans and 51 per cent of Brits say they believe in heaven – an increase of 10 per cent since a decade ago. Of those, 71 per cent say it is “an actual place”. Indeed, 43 per cent believe their pets – cats, rats, and snakes – are headed into the hereafter with them to be stroked for eternity. So why can’t humans get over the Pearly Gates?

In reality, the heaven you think you’re headed to – a reunion with your relatives in the light – is a very recent invention, only a little older than Goldman Sachs. Most of the believers in heaven across history would find it unrecognisable. Miller’s book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, teases out the strange history of heaven – and shows it’s not what you think.

Heaven is constantly shifting shape because it is a history of subconscious human longings. Show me your heaven, and I’ll show you what’s lacking in your life. The desert-dwellers who wrote the Bible and the Koran lived in thirst – so their heavens were forever running with rivers and fountains and springs. African-American slaves believed they were headed for a heaven where “the first would be last, and the last would be first” – so they would be the free men dominating white slaves. Today’s Islamist suicide-bombers live in a society starved of sex, so their heaven is a 72-virgin gang-bang. Emily Dickinson wrote: ” ‘Heaven’ – is what I cannot Reach!/The Apple on the Tree/Provided it do hopeless – hang/That – ‘Heaven’ is – to Me!” …

We know precisely when this story of projecting our lack into the sky began: 165BC, patented by the ancient Jews. Until then, heaven – shamayim – was the home of God and his angels. Occasionally God descended from it to give orders and indulge in a little light smiting, but there was a strict no-dead-people door policy. Humans didn’t get in, and they didn’t expect to. The best you could hope for was for your bones to be buried with your people in a shared tomb and for your story to carry on through your descendants. It was a realistic, humanistic approach to death. You go, but your people live on.

So how did the idea of heaven – as a perfect place where God lives and where you end up if you live right – rupture this reality? The different components had been floating around “in the atmosphere of Jerusalem, looking for a home”, as Miller puts it, for a while. The Greeks believed there was an eternal soul that ascended when you die. The Zoroastrians believed you would be judged in the end-time for your actions on earth. The Jews believed in an almighty Yahweh.

But it took a big bloody bang to fuse them. In the run up to heaven’s invention, the Jews were engaged in a long civil war over whether to open up to the Greeks and their commerce or to remain sealed away, insular and pure. With no winner in sight, King Antiochus got fed up. He invaded and tried to wipe out the Jewish religion entirely, replacing it with worship of Zeus. The Jews saw all that was most sacred to them shattered: they were ordered to sacrifice swine before a statue of Zeus that now dominated their Temple. The Jews who refused were hacked down in the streets.

Many young men fled into the hills of Palestine to stage a guerrilla assault – now remembered as the Hanukkah story. The old Jewish tale about how you continue after you die was itself dying: your bones couldn’t be gathered by your ancestors anymore with so many Jews scattered and on the run. So suddenly death took on a new terror. Was this it? Were all these lives ending forever, for nothing? One of the young fighters – known to history only as Daniel – announced that the martyred Jews would receive a great reward. “Many of those who sleep in the dust shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt,” he wrote and launched us on the road to the best-selling 1990s trash 90 Minutes in Heaven. Daniel’s idea was wildly successful. Within a century, most Jews believed in heaven, and the idea has never died.

But while the key components of heaven were in place, it was not the kumbaya holiday camp it has become today. It was a place where you and God and the angels sat – but Jesus warned “there is no marriage in heaven”. You didn’t join your relatives. It was you and God and eternal prayer. It was paradise, but not as we know it.

… So yes, there is pain in seeing the truth about Heaven – but there is also a liberation in seeing beyond the childhood myths of our species. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, written in Babylon 4,000 years ago, the eponymous hero travels into the gardens of the gods in an attempt to discover the secret of eternal life. His guide tells him the secret – there is no secret. This is it. This is all we’re going to get. This life. This time. Once. “Enjoy your life,” the goddess Siduri tells him. “Love the child who holds you by the hand, and give your wife pleasure in your embrace.” … Gilgamesh returns to the world and lives more intensely and truly and deeply than before, knowing there is no celestial after-party and no forever. After all this time, can’t we finally follow Gilgamesh to a world beyond heaven?

via Heaven: A fool’s paradise – Faith, Opinion – The Independent.

Brain training does not cause general improvement in brain function

In recent years people have been urged to treat their brain like a muscle, and train it regularly to keep it in top condition.

In other words, use it or lose it.

But now British researchers have scuttled the theory, with a study finding no general benefit from brain training.

The researchers recruited about 11,500 people and asked them to log on to a website and practice brain training tasks for 10 minutes a day, three times a week.

After six weeks, they compared the participants’ scores from the beginning and end of the exercise.

“The results were pretty surprising. There was really no change at all,” said Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist with Britain’s Medical Resource Council and an author of the study, which was published this morning in Nature magazine.

“That’s not to say they didn’t improve at anything at all, the stuff that they practised at, they obviously got better at.

“The actual training test they improved, but that’s not terribly surprising. What’s really surprising is that there was no transfer effects. No general change in cognitive function.”

Dr Owen says the number of participants they recruited is a huge number and gives them a lot of statistical power and the ability to detect even tiny differences.

“We had 12 different brain training tests because we really wanted to cover all of our bases,” he said.

“These tests are very sensitive to small changes in general cognitive function. So I’m quite confident that if there had been a difference, we would have detected it.” …

via UK research casts doubt on brain training – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Turkmen president wants to close entrance to Hell.

Turkmenistan’s quest to triple its already copious gas reserves has a fiery new focus: a flaming pit in the middle of the Karakum Desert.

A gaping crater dubbed “Hell’s Gate” has been spewing flames and smoldering in a remote part of the isolated Central Asian nation since a Soviet-era drilling accident nearly 40 years ago.

It has attracted some of the few foreign tourists who travel to Turkmenistan — and hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube videos such as here .

Now it has caught the eye of President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. He visited the crater this week and ordered local authorities to look for ways to get rid of it or ensure it would not hinder the development of nearby gas fields, state television in the tightly controlled nation reported.

Berdymukhamedov said that “existing anomalies have hindered the accelerated industrial development of the subsoil riches of central Karakum,” according to the report.

The crater, about 60 meters (yards) wide and 20 meters deep, appeared in 1971 when the ground caved under a drilling rig and exposed a methane-choked cave. Soviet geologists decided to burn off the gas and it has been burning ever since.

Turkmenistan, which produced about 75 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas a year, wants to triple output in the next 20 years to boost export revenues and expand sales beyond Russia, China and Iran to Western Europe, India and Pakistan.

via World around us: Turkmen president wants to close “Hell’s Gate”.

Rampaging goat puts three in hospital

Three people have been hospitalised after an angry goat invaded a nursing home in Melbourne, Australia, and went on a rampage that ended only when it was caught by police.

The seven-year-old billygoat, named Billy, wandered into the grounds of the On Luck Chinese nursing home after escaping its enclosure at a nearby home.

The animal became agitated when a gardener tried to shoo it away.

The goat butted the gardener before attacking a second man, aged in his seventies, who rushed over to help. Both of the men suffered suspected spinal injuries during the incident and the gardener, aged 60, was also left with cuts to his head and elbow.

A woman who had witnessed the furore injured her ankle as she ran for help.

Neighbours said it was the first time the animal had caused any trouble.

Peter Balassone, who lives next door to the goat’s owners, said he was surprised to hear of the drama.

“The goats have been fine, believe it or not. Not a problem at all,” he told the Melbourne Herald Sun newspaper.

“But he does have an electrified fence on his side (of our fence).”

“I’ve got two sheep, but they’re harmless.”

via Rampaging goat puts three in hospital – Telegraph.

‘Gigantic scorpion’ fossil found in Fife

A cast is being made of tracks left by a two-metre long ancient animal in north east Fife.

The tracks were made by a giant six-legged “sea scorpion” called Hibbertopterus as it crawled over damp sand about 330 million years ago.

It is the largest known walking trackway of a eurypterid or any invertebrate animal.

The tracks were discovered by Dr Martin Whyte from the University of Sheffield while he was out walking.

Scottish Natural Heritage, which is funding the project, described the find as unique and internationally important because the creature was gigantic.

It said the fossil would be moulded in silicone so that more people could see and research it.

Richard Batchelor from Geoheritage Fife, said: “The trackway is in a precarious situation, having been exposed for years to weathering.

“The rock in which it occurs is in danger of falling off altogether.

“Removing it and housing it in a museum would be prohibitively costly but moulding it in silicone rubber and making copies for educational and research purposes means that we can still see and research this huge creature’s tracks in years to come.”

The animal, which is related to modern-day scorpions and horseshoe crabs, was about two metres long and about one metre wide. …

via BBC News – ‘Gigantic scorpion’ fossil found in Fife.

My Short Sale: Everything Worked Out Fine

Now I believe. I did it.  I bought a home, it sank, and now I have successfully abandoned ship.

It was down to the wire: The Short Sale closed days before a foreclosure was due. I was almost taken for $3,000 by some shifty lawyers. In the end, a few hundred dollars to a qualified Real Estate attorney to review my original loan documents to determine if I was open to a deficiency judgment on the first and/or the second loans was the best thing I did. I also had a kick ass real estate agent who negotiated with Green Tree to get them to take 3% to release the lien on my property.

Green Tree ignored me for months after the short sale, then started collection calls again. Rather than pay an attorney to send a “cease and desist letter,” I sent Green Tree a letter myself, simply telling them that they are mistaken, and that according to two qualified Real Estate Finance Attorneys I consulted before making the decision to pursue a short sale, I do not, under California law, owe them $58,636 because the HELOC was purchase money debt.  (I recommended that they research California Code of Civil Procedure 580b,  580d, and 726 for starters). I asked that after researching this that they zero out my account and stop all collection activity.

After a series of FAX hurdles, I started calling them every day until I finally was able to get confirmation my letter was “uploaded to their system.”  The team at Green Tree reviewed my information and I was told today, that as of tomorrow morning, they will send a letter granting me a full release.

Now my credit will start to repair and also….

It seems almost certain that I will owe no taxes for COD (cancellation of debt)! Yippie Skippy. This was not at all certain until April 12, 2010 when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 401 by Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis).

“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Monday signed legislation that cancels the tax obligation for home sellers who dispose of their properties via short sales. The term “short sale” means the home is sold for less than the amount of the mortgage. In allowing such sales, the lender agrees to forgive part of the debt. But until the passage of the law, home sellers in California were threatened with a huge tax bill because the state considers that forgiven debt as taxable income.” – link

I’m posting this so others may learn from my mistake:  The pay-option ARM I was talked into is what caused this, not the drop in the housing market. If I had gotten the 30-year fixed loan I requested at first (assuming I could really have afforded the payments), I could have stuck it out and held my home until the market recovered.  (Will it? I doubt that now…) Now I’ll have to rebuild my credit and I won’t be able to buy for a few more years.

I got lucky and learned a hell of a lesson.

Some people go through this as a couple. I’m glad I didn’t have to put someone I loved through all the stress this short sale caused. It was my bad decision and I took the full weight of the fall…. without having to sell a kidney!  If they invent time travel, I’d go back and tell my “five years ago” self that everything works out fine.